With Two Meals, Janet Yellen’s Outreach in China Yields Mixed Results

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had two highly publicized meals during her recent visit to Beijing. Starkly opposing reactions to them give a taste of the challenge the U.S. faces as it tries to repair its fractured relationship with China.

On Saturday, Yellen convened a lunch with a group of young female Chinese economists and entrepreneurs. Photos of the gathering sparked a backlash on Chinese social-media sites, where nationalistic users lambasted the women with streams of misogynistic invective and accused them of being traitors for meeting with an envoy from China’s chief global antagonist.

“The Anti-Espionage Law has already taken effect. National security agency please investigate these ugly women at the dinner,” read one comment that received 2,500 likes under an article blasting the women on the popular app WeChat.

Another of Yellen’s meals, at a trendy restaurant serving cuisine from the southwestern province of Yunnan, elicited a far more positive response. Images and details of her meal quickly went viral after being posted online by the restaurant, which was featured in glowing state-media coverage and inundated with customers for days afterward.  

“Bon appétit Yellen, hope you can try lots of different delicacies during your stay in China,” China’s state broadcaster quoted a user as writing on the Twitter-like Weibo platform. 

Though Chinese foreign policy is set by the ruling Communist Party, public opinion plays a role in shaping how Beijing interacts with other countries, in particular the U.S. The recent bout of American public outreach is part of an effort by the White House to re-establish connections in China and arrest a free fall in relations with Beijing that Biden administration officials worry could lead to dangerous confrontation. 

The Treasury Department didn’t comment on the backlash. The department issued a press release from the meeting with the Chinese women, which said Yellen underscored the importance of women’s participation in the workforce as a driver of inclusive growth. “She also noted that women’s contributions to economics, in particular, are important to help ensure that economic research and policymaking appropriately reflect society’s priorities,” it said. 

Susan Shirk, a China affairs specialist at the University of California, San Diego, said Yellen’s spotlight on women might be widely appreciated. “Probably lots of women and girls out there think this is so cool,” Shirk said.

During her visit, Yellen sought to strike a delicate balance, offering assurances that the U.S. doesn’t seek estrangement from China while also criticizing the government’s treatment of U.S. companies. In Beijing, she emphasized the commonalities shared by Chinese and American people.

“While the U.S. has differences with the Chinese government, these are not disagreements with the Chinese people,” Yellen said at the Saturday lunch with the women economists. “Our people share many things in common—far more than our differences.”

Nationalist influencers with large followings on Chinese social-media platforms such as Weibo and WeChat raised doubts about the allegiance and motives of Yellen’s female lunch guests. The posts attracted thousands of derogatory remarks aimed at the women.

On Weibo, users grilled one participant, science-fiction writer Hao Jingfang, about why she attended the lunch. In her response, since deleted, she described Yellen as “the most China-friendly American official.” Chinese internet users dug up old photos of Hao participating in a 2012 panel discussion on feminist science fiction in the U.S., which has now become a renewed point of attack on her character and politics. She is “an anti-China element through and through,” one commentator wrote on Weibo.

The attacks also spread to Twitter, where economist Liu Qian, a managing director of the Economist Group, posted a photo of herself and Yellen, describing her lunch host as “highly intellectual and incredibly gracious—an inspirational role model.” The post attracted dozens of comments in Chinese accusing Liu of being a spy and a traitor.

Twitter is blocked in China, but users there can access it through censorship-circumvention tools such as virtual private networks. 

Hao and Liu didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

Feminism has become a point of contention in China, where the participation of women in the labor force has dropped and the presence of women at the highest levels of party leadership has dwindled to zero. Authorities in Beijing have increasingly sought to portray women’s rights activists as agents of Western governments sent to undermine China.

Meanwhile, misogynist nationalism is on the rise, experts say. Educated Chinese women who are perceived as unpatriotic are often subjected to naming and shaming on social media, according to a recent paper published by Qian Huang, an assistant professor at the University of Groningen.

In contrast, Yellen’s meal at the Yunnan restaurant, Yizuoyiwang, showed that American soft power still holds sway among at least some in China. 

The restaurant quickly released the dishes Yellen’s group had, peddling the list as the “Money God’s menu.” All the items on the menu are the restaurant’s signature dishes that require fresh ingredients, such as mushrooms and cheese, from Yunnan. A specialty mushroom, Jianshouqing, which the restaurant said the table made four orders of, has enjoyed instant fame in China. Social-media users as well as a tourism bureau in Yunnan have raved about Yellen’s taste for—and understanding of—Chinese food.

The enthusiasm conjured positive responses to previous visits by American officials to Beijing restaurants, including Yaoji Chaogan, a hole-in-the-wall local eatery that became a national sensation in 2011 when then-Vice President Biden dropped in for lunch.

Write to Shen Lu at [email protected]